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Selfies at the Mall

Tanya and Shanaya enjoyed shopping together. While they spent very little time on shopping as such, they spent more time on window shopping, planning for their next shopping trip, and gossiping about their colleagues. Though they worked for the same company, they never got much time to discuss about other people at work. So, they regularly chose shopping as a good excuse to update each other.

After going through various shops, as a part of their ritual, they began their next task of taking selfies in front of some of the expensive brands. They spent the next thirty minutes taking pictures of both of them at various locations within the mall.

Shanaya was in the habit of recording their conversations while clicking photos. She would later make videos using these images and sound bytes from the recordings.

After having loads of fun and laughing uncontrollably at some of the weird selfies, they decided to call it a day. Before leaving, they usually go through all the selfies and decide on the ones that need to be updated in social media sites and the ones that have to be hidden only for later amusement.

As they sifted through the images, Shanaya caught something unusual in two of the images. In the background of these two images, she noticed someone. There was a man above the chandelier as though as the was dismantling the chandelier. It did not appear as though he was trying to repair it. She thought that this guy was trying to break some of the parts of the chandelier. As they looked at some of the photographs, it was the same man in the background at different places hampering with the lights at various places. Shanaya realized that something was crazy with the entire episode.

She contacted the security team and asked them for the details of the manager. She approached the manager, Naren, and told him that she saw someone above the chandelier hampering with the cables and the parts. She did not tell him that she had photographs of these incidents. He told her that they are getting some of the lights repaired for the event that is going to happen the next weekend.

Shanaya could always guess if a person is lying. So, she decided to find the truth. She, deliberately, left her phone on her chair in the room. After about twenty minutes, she came back rushing in search of her mobile and found it in the same place.

Tanya asked her if she did it deliberately. They both reached their car. Shanaya stopped the recording on her phone and replayed the last twenty minutes.

They were surprised to hear a phone conversation. Naren, the security manager of the mall, called someone on his phone and started scolding them.

He said on the phone, “Can’t you do anything carefully? Two girls saw you doing something above the chandelier. Why can’t you hide yourself? I told you to finish this work during midnight hours. But, you were drunk. Listen. Be careful. Complete this task without getting observed in the next one hour. We need to implement our plan carefully. The team will reach here any time. Tell me once you are done. I will go home in the pretext of headache or something like that.”

Shanaya immediately called the cops. She told them about the strange person behind the chandelier, the images, and the conversation of the manager.

Within a few minutes, a few cops reached the parking spot in civilian uniform and had a word with Shanaya and Tanya.

The cops sent their investigation teams to all the places that these girls have taken pictures.

First, they reached the chandelier. Without rising suspicion, one of the members climbed the chandelier while others did their best to avoid attention. He found a bomb planted there.

The second cop found another bomb behind the display lights of a large expensive store. They were all shocked. Within the next fifteen minutes, they found nine bombs in different places within the same mall.

As planned, they did call the manager or consult him already. As he was about to go home, a team of cops caught him outside and held him captive in their jeep. They drove him to the parking lot. When Naren realized that he was brought back to the mall, he panicked. He wanted to go away. He said that he did not want to be killed. He was pretty sure that the bombs would go away any time from now. When asked about the real people behind the bombs, he said that he had no clue. He was offered handsome money and was just asked to help their guy plant the bombs in strategic places across the mall.

The cops found it hard to figure out the main people behind these grand plans.

Meanwhile, the central police station received a threatening call from some unknown number. The caller told that the cops should release their leader from the prison immediately, else, they would bomb one of the biggest malls in the city and bring it down completely. Little did the caller know that the bombs have been removed and diffused. The cops continued to act as if they were worried about the mall. The caller told them that he would not tell which mall it is going to be. The cops also feigned ignorance. Meanwhile, the top cop sent other teams to other malls to get them checked. He did not want to take any chances.

The top cop also tried to trace all the relatives of the imprisoned terror leader to find out if any of them is the perpetrator of this crime.

Within a few minutes, the cops received one more threatening call. The unidentified caller said that he planted sixteen bombs in the mall and they would all explode simultaneously bringing the mall down. He also proudly refused to tell which mall they are targeting.

Shanaya and the cops at the mall realized that they found only fifteen bombs and there was one more bomb in the mall. They tried to look at all the pictures on Shanaya’s phone to check if they missed any place. The cops tried to search every similar place within the mall to find out the last bomb. But, they could find it.

Just then, Tanya recollected the fact that the weird man went into the manager’s office after Shanaya went their to take her cell phone. After nearly ten minutes of frantic search, they found that a bomb was placed behind one of the posters in the manager’s room.

The top cop, on the other hand, suspected the foster son of the imprisoned leader to be behind these attacks. He immediately sent search teams to find him. After a vigorous search operation, they found him in one of the high end apartments. He was with a group of goons and they were all waiting for him to operate the remote in case the cops were willing to not cooperate. As the cops tried to arrest him, he used the remote and pressed the detonating buttons. He looked over the window. The cops realized that the mall was visible from this window. He was shocked to notice that none of the bombs exploded and his attempt failed badly.